


Never a wasted moment

by flesh



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-03
Updated: 2011-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:26:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flesh/pseuds/flesh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(SamandDean genfic, pg, 1200 words)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never a wasted moment

Panic jumpstarts him awake.

Sam's heart is banging hard against his ribs and he doesn't know why. The air is muzzy with darkness and stuffed up with silence. Sam's eyelids are dropping shut again already when it happens again.

Dean makes a noise, high and reedy. Desperate. He kicks out against the covers lying over him, twists and thrashes like they're a body holding him down.

Sam tumbles out of bed, stubs his toe against the corner of the nightstand, but gets to Dean's side. He tries to catch Dean's shoulders as they jerk, lifting clear off the bed, but his bones are like birds and they jump out of Sam's hands until Sam has to squeeze tight to hold him. He shakes Dean gently.

"Dean, c'mon, wake up. C'mon, wake up." His voice sounds dusty with fatigue, like a recording played too many times with nothing alive behind it anymore.

The hunt last night was nasty, but there was enough physical exertion involved that Dean should have been too exhausted to dream. And if running for your life didn't knock you out, a half bottle of Jack should have done the trick.

Apparently not.

All the nightmares in Sam's head have been sewn shut with Death's neat stitches. They're tidily put away, not like Dean's, which are strewn through his psyche like children's toys, too easy to trip over.

"Dean! Wake up!" Sam barks.

And Dean wakes. His hand shoots under the pillow, and Sam sees Dean's fingers flex tight around his knife before he recognizes him.

Dean's breath shivers, gradually slows as he looks up at Sam. Eventually he lets go of the knife. "What is it? What's goin' on?" Like it's Sam's idea to be awake at this fucking time of night.

"You were dreaming," Sam tells him, already turning back to his bed.

"I wake you up?"

"Nah," says Sam, and it's mostly a groan. His brain's switching off again, leaving him only the motor control he needs to pull the covers back over himself.

Sam stays awake just long enough to hear Dean trying to match the rhythm of his breathing to Sam's.

:::

Maybe it was the hunt. Maybe there was something about that nest of bone and human meat that reminded Dean of Hell. The blood made his hands silky, Sam's too. Maybe that triggered a memory in him that Dean can't put away.

Sam comes awake with the sound of Dean moaning again. His eyes are sticky-shut but he forces them open. Once more, his heart is going too fast, a reflex response to the terrified sounds Dean's making. He's still half-blind when he gets to Dean, isn't thinking straight, just grabbing at him and shaking.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up." The words come out thick and insistent.

Dean jerks awake, stretches for the knife just like before and gets it half-out from under the pillow this time, before Sam can make him meet his eyes and stop. Dean stares at him again, bright with bewildered panic, face so open he's a kid.

Sam deflates with a sigh and sits on the edge of his bed, knuckling his fat, hot eyes. He listens to Dean breathe, each rise and fall of it like shredding paper. His mouth is gummed up, and he swallows it clear. Rational thought begins to organize his thinking.

"C'mon," he says, standing up and rolling his spine out straight in one arching stretch. "Laundry run."

The noise Dean makes is reassuringly irritated. He rolls over, holds his wrist up into the half-light to peer at his watch. Makes another irritated noise. "Dude, what the fuck? It's not even four yet."

Just done pulling his hoodie on, Sam shoots him a meaningful look. "Yeah, and we're awake, aren't we?"

:::

It's still dark as they leave the motel room. There's still a moon up there, fogged over with freezing cloud. Dean grumbles all the way over to the Impala, grumbles as he starts the engine, grumbles as they drive into town. Sam rests his head against the window and tries not to fall asleep.

"We just gonna sit outside and wait 'til it's open?" Dean demands.

"It's 24/7," Sam tells him mildly, and sure enough, there's the Laundromat: not a soul inside but lit with pale minty light.

Between them, they load their bloody, filthy, sweaty clothes into the machines, and slot the coins in, each one falling with a chunky _clunk_. The amniotic whoosh of the water begins, and Dean drops himself onto the slatted wooden bench opposite. His hands droop between the v of his thighs, looking like poor soft little things, despite the calluses and raw red knuckles.

Sam sits down next to him. He watches his shirt tumble around in the mini-sea, pressing up to the glass and peering through the soap-mist like a familiar face, before swimming away again. Then it's Dean's t-shirt waving at him, every bit as much an old friend.

It's restful.

"We should do this more often," he says.

"Your idea of Saturday night fun is pretty sucky," Dean says, or mostly says; the second half of the sentence builds up and opens out into a huge yawn.

Inside the washer, Sam's shirt is twisted up with Dean's t-shirt – the green one where the stitching on the hem's come undone – and the button on his shirt-cuff is tapping a little Morse code message to them against the window.

A solitary car drifts by outside, and Sam checks his own watch.

"Pretty sure it's late enough to be Sunday morning." He yawns himself. "Early enough," he amends in a mutter.

Dean doesn't answer. Sam looks towards him, to see if he's ignoring him or he's going to argue about it, but – Dean's asleep, head nodding slowly, listing inexorably towards Sam's shoulder.

Sam grins. A few seconds later Dean's head nudges him as it settles. He watches his clothes dance in the water with Dean's.

:::

Sam doesn't remember getting back to the motel. He has distant, dark recollections of prodding Dean towards his bed as he falls at his own, his whole body aching for it, jaw fixed open in a series of yawns that roll into each other.

He blinks at the ceiling, which is a vintage cream like old lace in the morning light. He doesn't want to close his eyes again, he doesn't need to. He's awake now. He looks over at what woke him: the sound of the door closing.

Dean grins guiltily. "Sorry, didn't mean to wake you. Kinda got my hands full." He's ducks his head towards the two plastic cups of coffee he's carrying, balanced on a box of donuts.

Sam sits up, takes the cup Dean passes him with a muttered, _careful, it's hot,_ and it's funny to Sam that Dean will trust him with knives and shotguns and Lucifer, but still worries he might burn himself on hot coffee.

They drink and eat in comfortable quiet. Then Dean licks the sugar off his fingertips, drains his cup and tosses it into the trash.

"So, what do you wanna do today?"

Sam grins and stretches out luxuriantly on the cheap motel sheets. "It's Sunday," he says, like this is obvious. "We should take it easy."

~end


End file.
